Five Distinguished Writers to speak at Newhouse Center

Wellesley's Newhouse Center for the Humanities has invited five writers to share their experiences and knowledge with Wellesley over the next two months during its 2010 Distinguished Writers Series. Each writer will read an excerpt or two from his or her most recent work before being interviewed by Series Curator Colin Channer. The writers will discuss the processes of both writing and publishing in addition to their influences and how their own unique stories began; they will then accept questions from the audience.

The series opens with Susan Straight and Marlon James. Straight is a fiction writer who has published seven novels, one middle-grade reader and numerous short stories and essays.  For the last twenty years, Straight's stories have taken place in the town of Rio Seco, a fictional town in California that she created at age 18. Many of the characters that inhabit this town recur throughout her works, though not always as main characters. Her latest novel, "Take One Candle Light A Room," explores a woman's search for her godson. James is the author of two published novels and numerous essays and is a professor of literature and creative writing at Macalester College, St. Paul.  He also writes the blog "Marlon James Among Other Things…" on which he reviews film, television and literature and occasionally interviews fellow authors.

The Newhouse Center will next showcase Meir Shalev, an Israeli writer. Shalev has been awarded literary prizes in France, Italy and Israel, and his works have been translated into more than twenty languages. He is the author of six works of fiction, five works of nonfiction and thirteen children's books. He is currently working on "Beginnings: Reflections on the Bible's Intriguing Firsts," which is a collection of nonfiction essays on the Bible.

Ha Jin is the only featured writer who has published both prose and poetry. Born in northern China, he studied English when colleges reopened after the Cultural Revolution and furthered his education by studying abroad in America and earning a Ph.D. in English from Brandeis. After the Tiananmen Square Massacre, he decided to stay in America. He published two books of poetry before turning to prose, and has since published four collections of short fiction, one more collection of poetry and five novels.  

Caryl Phillips is the final writer featured who has published both fiction and nonfiction, including stage plays, novels, screenplays and radio plays. His work has been translated into 13 languages, and he has taught at universities in six different countries. He currently serves as a professor of English at Yale University and is an honorary fellow of The Queen's College Oxford University.

The writers highlighted in the Distinguished Writers Series are as diverse and varied as Wellesley's own population; they each have a wealth of experience and knowledge to offer. The talks, held in the drawing room of the Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities, are free and open to the public. Each reading begins at 4:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, starting Feb. 15 and ending Mar. 29.